Description: This book examines the special relationship between politics and design in Sweden, revealing in particular the cultural meanings this relationship holds for Swedish...
Brief description: Keith M. Murphy is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. He is coeditor of Toward an Anthropology of the Will.
Review Quotes:
For anyone who has taught the history of 20th-century design and had a student ask, 'How can a chair be political?' this book will help answer that question. It is not a typical design history text--there are no large color images of landmark chairs or textiles and no evolutionary account of historically significant designers. Instead, Murphy (anthropology, UC Irvine) draws out how ordinary objects within the built environment embody Sweden's social democratic ideology: that is, the way Swedes use design to structure the everyday world they live and move about in.
-- "CHOICE"